


Everything she has ever known

by Lia (Liafic)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-27
Updated: 2010-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:17:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liafic/pseuds/Lia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is paler than she remembers, and she idly wonders if he still trains at sunrise every morning or if he is now confined to palace walls and meetings and black ink on scrolls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything she has ever known

**1**

The sun rises, sweeping over distant fields of ice and throwing everything into shadowed blue relief, but this is no longer her home. Katara has become accustomed to the sun-drenched deserts of a faraway land, a place of ruined temples that hide among the mountains. With icy fingers, she pulls her fur hood closer to shield against the chill. 

The Southern Water Tribe is rebuilding, and the sharp sound of ice fissuring and reforming echoes through the cold. It is always dark here. They have reached the time of year when the sun only appears for an hour, creeping slowly across the grey sky before descending once again into the sea. From its place on the horizon, it warms her skin, paints her face in colour fleetingly. 

“Katara?” 

When Aang says her name, it is always a question. For as long as she has known him, it has been as if he worries he will one day close his eyes and wake up in a place where she is not, so he says her name with reverence and innate gentleness and wide grey eyes. Something inside her chest tenses up every time, and she closes her eyes and ignores it. 

“You should come inside,” he says. “It’s getting dark. It’s getting cold, Katara.” 

She can feel him behind her, and she doesn’t know that he is reaching forward, thinking about taking her hand and then thinking better of it. “I’ll just be a minute,” she says. “You don’t have to wait.” 

When she hears the faint sound of his footsteps on the snow, she remembers light, remembers the sky lit up with it, red and scorching and blotted out with smoke from a comet that blazed its way across the earth. Imagined heat across her skin, she remembers running across a palace courtyard, pulling the weight of oceans with her own will, every sinew in her body tensed, her pulse rushing through her in waves. 

This is no longer her home. 

**2**

She and Sokka visit the Fire Nation in the fall, and he makes a comment about how they chose the worst possible time because everything is red, even the trees, and how can she stand it? But Aang has left for Omashu, which is halfway across the world, and she doesn’t know why but for the first time in a long while, she feels like she can breathe. They wander through the capital city while the shops light their lanterns alongside the cobblestone street. Eventually, the darkness deepens to the velvety black of night, and the faint outline of the moon appears slowly on the horizon. 

They meet the fire lord and lady on the first night in a hall painted with crimson and gold and lined with tapestries. Katara finds herself nervous, tension winding its way down her spine and into the tips of her fingers while they wait kneeling on cushions by an ornate table. She can see her reflection in the lacquered surface, her face a serene, dark outline framed by gentle dark waves. A servant has brought in cups of jasmine tea, and Sokka mutters that this probably means they will be waiting a while. Immediately after he says it, the door behind them opens and Katara’s heart races in her chest. 

He is paler than she remembers, and she idly wonders if he still trains at sunrise every morning or if he is now confined to palace walls and meetings and black ink on scrolls. Sokka makes a comment that she barely hears, and then everyone is embracing and greeting and wondering how long it has been. 

She goes to Mai first and is surprised, in a distant sort of way, when she is warm and breathing in her arms, though Katara supposes that to have expected otherwise was illogical. Mai is as poised as Katara remembers, pale and thin, her eyes mirrors that reflect everything and give away nothing. Then there is Zuko, who says her name like a low whisper and who burns like fire under her fingertips and the fabric of their clothing. 

“Fourteen months,” he says, his breath warm against the skin of her neck. For a moment, it feels as though the world around her has faded into a pastel version of itself, as though time has slowed in some implacable way. Her own voice is quiet and distant in her mind when she replies. 

“But it feels like so much longer,” she says. 

**3**

On the second night, Katara wanders through the gardens and bends the water in the pond into great sheets of rain that reflect and fall around her. The full moon chills her skin, the humidity and heat of the day having faded with the last rays of the sun, but something about this is comforting to her. She never could have slept tonight, she being like every other water bender on every other night like this, when the power of the oceans flows through her, pulling at some deep place in her body with tense and urgent waves. 

At her frozen home, she spent these nights awake in the furs of her bed, her hands clenched in fists as she arched her back and listened to the sound of the tide, of the sea that flowed with cold and salty life. She had been unable to leave her home without worrying about wandering too far from the village, getting lost and freezing to death on a barren, icy tundra. 

“Katara.” His voice is low from somewhere behind her, and she turns to see him leaning against the red pillars of the palace. The water surrounding her cascades suddenly to the earth. 

“Am I allowed to be here?” she says, pulling her wet robes closer against her. 

“Of course,” he says. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He sits on the steps, and she faces him in the middle of the garden, silent. She is dimly aware of the reflection of the moon on the water. “Don’t let me stop you,” he says. 

“You’re going to watch me?” 

“Not if you don’t want me to.” He stares at her through the fringe of his dark, unruly hair. 

“No,” she says. “Stay.” 

She starts with the water in the pond, whipping it into ribbons that wind their way around her, through the dark strands of her hair and out into arcs across the sky. He watches her silently from the shadows, following the way she moves in languid steps, her arms raised above her and her eyes closed. 

She stops suddenly, her hands held out against the droplets that hang suspended around them, and she walks closer, and something strains inside him. She reaches out, leaning against his body, her hand cold on the skin of his neck, his words caught in his throat and his palms white where they press against one another. 

She is bending his blood, he realises, though the thought of it is distant and anxious. Her fingers trace over the planes of his chest until his heart is racing, and his skin burns, and his breathing is erratic against her body. When she lets it go, she can feel him, tense and unyielding beneath her, and their eyes meet. Before she has time to think, he is kissing her. 

**4**

On the third night, he comes into her bedroom as she is lighting candles. 

“What are you doing here?” she hisses when she sees him leaning in her doorway, the light from the hallway throwing their shadows across the floor. 

“What do you think?” he replies, and he closes the door behind him. Somehow, his fingers are tangled in her hair, and he pushes her against the wall, their bodies pressing against one another. 

“You are _married_,” she whispers when his hands trace over the bones of her hips. His mouth is hot against her shoulder. “Zuko!” She shoves him away. 

“What, Katara?” he says, moving towards her. “You want this.” 

“That doesn’t make it right!” she says, but she can’t move, she realises, when he is against her again, his hand tracing a burning trail up the inside of her thigh. 

“What would make it right?” he murmurs, his eyes meeting hers. He stops, and something darkens in his face. He steps back. 

“Zuko—” she says. 

“Is this about Aang?” 

She feels his words almost as if she has been slapped, a sudden impact that knocks her breath away. “He saved us,” she whispers. 

“So you, what—you owe him?” he says. His eyes are narrowed, his fists clenched. 

“Yes, I owe him!” she says. “We all owe him!” 

“That’s not love, Katara,” Zuko hisses, and she looks away but can feel rage burning at the back of her throat. 

“So what?” she says. “What am I supposed to do, Zuko?” 

“Leave him,” he says. “Tell him the truth.” 

“Why should I?” she says. “I won’t have anyone else.” 

“Katara . . .” His voice is pained, pleading, his fingers clenched tight around her wrist. 

“No, Zuko,” she says. “You and Mai, you’re together. So tell me, is that love?” 

“It doesn’t matter!” he snaps back, and she flinches. He lets go of her wrist, leaving an angry band of crimson across her skin. “She’s what I have because I can’t have you.” 

**5**

On the fourth day, Zuko and Katara do not speak, and their eyes do not meet when they cross paths in the hollow corridors of the palace. Mai notices this because she always notices. As she walks alongside her husband, their footsteps echoing, her hand shakes where it rests on his arm, and he feels it but says nothing. When she retires to her chambers that night, she can’t fall asleep, tears soaking her hair as she cries silently into her pillow. 

In the two years that she and Zuko have been married, they have not fought once, have never shared angry silences and glares fraught with unsaid words. Through that whole time, as her heart was slowly and painfully breaking, as the distance between her and her husband stretched moment by moment, she convinced herself that this meant they were perfect for one another. Now she realises it just meant that he did not care enough to bother. 

**6**

On the fifth day, Katara announces that she is going to sleep overnight on the ship, as she and Sokka are leaving early the next morning, and Sokka raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms but doesn’t say anything. Katara spends the day rolling clothing and scrolls in the stillness of her bedroom at the palace, the distant sounds of the capital fading away through her window as darkness falls. 

When she leaves, Sokka says he will see her in the morning, and she says a cordial goodbye to Mai, guilt pulling at some place in her chest as they exchange promises of letters and a place to stay if Mai ever happens to be travelling in the southern sea. Katara can see the shadows under her eyes, the effort she makes to keep her features calm and her gaze placid, and when they embrace, she has to choke back the urge to just run as far as she can, to wring her hands together and break down sobbing. 

The feeling passes, and the shadows lengthen over the red earth of the palace. Zuko is just not there, so Katara leaves the compound and makes her way to the harbour, where the ship looms darkly before her. It will take her back to familiarity and ice and everything she has ever known. 

**7**

Before the sun rises, she is standing on the deck, her dress whipping around her ankles, looking out at the sea that stretches to the horizon. When he arrives, he is suddenly behind her in that way he has of appearing in complete silence. 

“I didn’t think I would see you again,” she says. He reaches out, takes her cold hand in his, lacing their fingers together, and she wants to pull away, imagines herself telling him to leave her alone, but she doesn’t. 

“You’re leaving today,” he says. She can’t tell whether he wants an explanation, but she decides to give him one anyway. 

“There’s no point in staying,” she says. “My life is in the south.” She can feel his hand tighten around hers, the bones of her fingers pressing together. There is something tense and barely hidden in him, in the set of his jaw, the stiff posture of his shoulders. “My life is there,” she continues, and he snaps. 

“Why are you doing this?” he hisses. 

She whips around to face him. “Doing what, Zuko?” she says. “You’re the one who went and got married, and I can’t—to Mai, I can’t do this to her.” 

Her hands are shaking in his, her expression torn between rage and helplessness and some unreadable emotion that swims behind her eyes and makes her want to cry. He raises a hand to her face, his fingers hot against her cheek. “Katara,” he says, his voice breaking, “I need you.” 

In that moment, she gives in. They are suddenly against one another, the railing of the ship pressing into her back as Zuko kisses her hard, his hand fisted in the dark waves of her hair. She breaks away, cold air stinging her face as she pulls him into her room, her lips finding the spaces between his collarbones, her hands trailing ice down his back. 

She can feel his pulse pounding, the heat where she touches him and feels the tension of muscle and bone under his skin. When she pulls at the belt of his robes, the knots coming undone between her fingers, he shoves her against the wall, pulls her leg around him as the steel of the ship presses to her shoulders, and he lifts her dress and forces himself against her. 

“Katara, please—” 

She can feel him shuddering, his breathing fast and anguished. She closes her eyes, her hands clenched, nails digging into her palms. “All right,” she says. “Zuko, all right.” 

It hurts, her back against the cold metal and white lights swimming behind her eyes as he moves. Everything is so much louder to her, the sound of the sea against the hull of the ship, of their breathing. She realises that he is kissing her, that his heart is racing against her chest, that her hands have somehow become tangled in his hair, that slowly she is able to see again. 

Then it is over, when his fingers press into her back and he collapses against her with a strangled cry. She can hear herself gasping for breath as if coming up from under water, feels hot tears on her cheeks and realises that she was crying, and she presses the back of her hand across her eyes. After a moment, she pushes him slowly away from her, and he ties the belt of his robes while she straightens out her dress and runs her hands through her tangled hair. 

“This ship is leaving in a few hours,” she says into the darkness and the silence. “You should go.” 

“I know,” he says. “I could never have spent the night, anyway.” 

He reaches across, runs his fingers through a curl of her hair, and lets his hand fall. She breathes in as if she is about to say something, but she doesn’t, so he leaves without any more words, and she watches his dark figure casting a shadow along the harbour as the sun rises and he walks further and further away. 

**8**

The place looks different when she and Sokka arrive back home. It is in the details, the way a certain walkway is shaped or the design of the door that leads into her mother’s old home, but the effect is one of complete disorientation, here in the darkness of the south. 

“Katara?” 

She turns to see Aang wearing a parka and standing by the fireplace. She realises that he is making tea, and for a second it is this simple, familiar gesture that pulls at some deep and distant place inside of her, and she finds herself struggling not to cry. “Aang,” she whispers, “I . . .” 

“Oh, Katara, no,” he says, pulling her into an embrace as she runs her mitten across her face, wiping away the salty tears that freeze on her cheeks. “You’re home. It’s all okay now.” 

“Of course,” she says, and she tries to control her breathing, to not talk in shuddering sobs. “I just—I missed you so much.” 

They sit by the fire for what seems like hours, talking about Omashu and the Fire Nation and warming their hands over steaming cups of white tea. Later, after Aang has left, promising to come by in the morning, Katara lies awake in her furs for a long time. When she finally falls asleep, she dreams of a red nation, of a burning sun and golden eyes, of colours that have no names. 

This is no longer her home.


End file.
